Fardwor, Russia!: A Fantastical Tale of Life Under Putin

XVIII

“HE KNOWS NOTHING,” Slava shrugged an hour later in Kirill’s office. “He seems crazy. I took him to the Metro and came right back.”

“Thank you,” Kirill shook his hand. “I hope you understand that I know… ” Kirill suddenly paused. “I know how to say ‘thank you.’ ”

Slava understood. He was proud of himself—he hadn’t broken, hadn’t given himself away, not even when left alone with Mefody; and Mefody, even when he understood that Slava was no ally, plaintively repeated, “Remember, remember!” Slava remembered everything, but what he remembered no longer had anything to do with the adult-size Mefody. Giving Mefody a shakedown, he took away his passport and his wallet, but honestly—Slava isn’t some kind of brute—returned all the cash to its owner, fifteen and something thousand rubles. Then he escorted Mefody down in the elevator, put him in the car, and drove him to the Metro. In parting, he asked him not to show his face again, although he knew that Mefody would come back.

He did come back—that same night—to the restaurant Color of the Night, where Kirill was giving a lecture on the theme of “The Tao of Winnie the Pooh”; the cover was a thousand rubles, and Mefody paid for a ticket just to go over to his brother and once again see him recoil and shout to his security to take this psycho away. The private security guards who worked at Color of the Night weren’t of the experienced variety. They didn’t know how to beat someone up properly, without leaving marks on the body; and Mefody saw Slava—from upside down while lying on the floor—through a veil of blood dripping down his face. Slava extended a hand: “Get up, let’s go,” and dragged the sobbing Mefody to the toilet, led him to the sink, where he let him wash the blood from his face, and then taking his face in his hands, forced Mefody’s jaws apart, placed a pill under his tongue and, keeping hold of his elbow, waited as Mefody slowly sank to the tile floor. He bent down, checked his pulse—there was no pulse—came out of the toilet, went up to security, and, pointing to the open door, guiltily pronounced, “A heart attack, looks like.”

While Mefody was being beaten, he thought that Marina would likely get upset when she saw his smashed face, and she might even cry when he told her about the day’s adventures. But even if he had stayed alive and gone back to the hotel, instead of Marina he would have found a note in the room that said that she realized that she made a mistake, that she had been wrong to leave Karpov and was now returning to him, and for Mefody to not come looking for her.

She wrote the note fifteen minutes after parting from Mefody on Tverskaya—she descended into the underground crosswalk, came out on the other side, then stopped and quickly went back.

Then she walked out of the hotel onto the street, descended into the Metro, bought a twenty-ride ticket and headed to her mom’s place at Taganka.